The Bedside

Sitting by the side of the bed lies a John Cale biography, Rubicon, on the collapse of the Roman Empire, Sam Harris’s End of Faith and An Introduction to Repertory Grids. There are a number of concerns here and, of course, its unlikely I’ll get beyond the Cale biography on this trip away from home. And that will be enough to get me stoked up, fired and frustrated at the lack of noise making equipment and time I have to hand in this windy little retreat by the sea.

Daddy climbs the stairs with cosy bear and the turning of Caesar.Christ lies in ruins with his father and his father’s brothers,Weeping over their broken toys,And you, you pick at the paper on your wall, tearing at the yachts and lighthouse.Daddy gives you cosy bear and kisses your warm little head,Puts Caesar to bed, consoles the fallen idols,And stares out into the dark, with no small degree of anxietyAs logic and reason march all over the horizon,Burning churches, kicking the Middle East out of the ninth century,recasting the law, re-imagining poetry in the clean hands of scientists.I take my anxiety back down the little wooden hillAnd ask to be entertained by small lights in the corner of the room.Instead, I am given wine – and the wine is good, And all the little corner lights offer…Polar Bears digging little troughs in the snow and lying down to die in the wind,Ice failing, wanderings into open oceans,21st century money coming face to face with Dark Age reason in the sun, in the sand, in the jungle – in the places where our oil hides;machete, machete, machete…